Meditation on National Celebration and Personal Connection

“When you expect good you will get something good.” This is what my son’s teacher told me when I thanked her for encouraging him to do something hard at school a few months ago. She has an amazing ability to motivate students and to get the best from them. She sees within them what is possible.

It’s a life lesson really, for me as an educator, mother and citizen of Israel. It’s been about four years since we made aliyah. My kids read Hebrew more easily than English, are fully embarrassed by their parents’ American accents and smoke tuna on family campouts with the finesse of a native Israeli scout.

And while there is so much work to be done in Israel, a real reckoning with the dwindling opportunities for two state solution with the Palestinians, creating a fair immigration policy for non-Jewish citizens of the state sparked by the crisis with asylum seekers to name a couple, with Israel approaching its 70th birthday, there is also so much to celebrate.